Google Seeks Feedback on EU Right to Be Forgotten

Aug. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Google Inc. will tour Paris, Madrid
and five other European cities as part of the company’s response
to a court ruling that created a right to be forgotten on the
Internet.

Advisers to Google, including Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales
and former German Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, will discuss privacy rights with experts and
members of the public in Madrid on Sept. 9, Google said in a
blog posted yesterday. Google’s dispute with Spain’s privacy
regulator led to a European Union court ruling in May that
ordered it to remove personal information on request from search
results.

Google’s top lawyer said last month that company disagrees
with the ruling, which set “very vague and subjective tests”
on what information was in the public interest and shouldn’t be
removed and didn’t allow a clear exemption for news articles.
The company has also been seeking online comments on the ruling.

Privacy regulators have criticized Mountain View,
California-based Google’s steps to tell web publishers when it
is removing links to their sites. Regulators are drafting
guidelines on how they should handle any disputes by people who
were unhappy at how Google handles their initial request for
links to be removed.

The Madrid meeting will be followed by an event in Rome on
Sept. 10, one in Paris on Sept. 25, Warsaw on Sept. 30, Berlin
on Oct. 14, London Oct. 16 and Brussels on Nov. 4. Anyone
interested in attending can sign up online around two weeks
before the event, Google said. It opened registration for the
Madrid and Rome events yesterday.